


Small Talk For Dummies

by katkrap



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: And by Major Character, Gen, He is so a Major Character STFU, I mean Dummy., Major character death - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-10-24
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:39:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katkrap/pseuds/katkrap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A birthday prompt from a friend: A fic in which Dummy is broken beyond repair.  This is what I gave her.  Happy Birthday, Alexis.  <3 <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Small Talk For Dummies

Tony swore aloud and dropped his soldering iron in surprise.  Where it fell, it melted loose two circuits and began scorching the motherboard before he recovered enough to retrieve it, swearing like a sailor the entire time.   Tony looked down at the large burn on his arm, head swimming from adrenaline.  Then he looked at the droid who was working beside him, still soldering away with its own iron as if nothing had happened.

Tony rapped his fist on the arm of the droid.  “Hey!  Dummy!” he shouted at it.  “The _hell_ was that?!”

It whirred, turned the arm as though it were looking at him.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you!” he shouted.  “Did you miss the part where you got that damn iron stuck to my arm?!”  He held it out, knowing full-well the droid had no visual sensors.

It whirred at him.

Tony shook his head.  “God damn i—next time?  Next time, I’m dismantling you and giving you to a kindergarten class under the guise that you’re high-end tinker toys, got it?”  He took in a hiss as he poked at the violent-red gash on his arm and snapped, “put that iron away and go get the damn first aid kit.  Now!”  The droid set the iron back on the metal plate on the table next to the motherboard and rolled away while Tony kept staring at his arm, blowing on the burn.  “ _Jeeeeesus_ —”

“You okay?”

Tony looked up to where Steve had just appeared in the doorway of the lab.  Tony rolled his eyes and held up his arm.  “Just a flesh wound,” he drawled, glancing back as Dummy rolled back, first aid kit in hand.  “Third-degree flesh wound.”  He snatched the kit from the outstretched arm and barked, “roll away, I don’t even want to _look_ at you right now, I’m so mad.  I don’t want to _look_ at you for a _week!_   If I see you before then, I’m going to pretend I’m an eleven-year-old special kid and strap fireworks to your servos to see what happens, got it?!  Now go stick yourself in a supply closet or something!  And stay there until I call you!!”  He sighed, trying to open the kit with one hand while the droid hung it’s head—or rather, arm—and rolled out of the room.

Tony gave Steve a glare as he sat down on the opposite side of the table and opened the kit for him.  “What do you need?” the captain asked.

Tony sighed and pointed.  “Just… some lidocaine, burn cream, and gauze.  Oh!  And a new motherboard if there’s one in there.”

“Calm it down, Stark,” Steve said, digging through the kit to pull out the requested items.  “And even if there was a motherboard in here, I doubt I’d know what it looks like.”

Tony grabbed a package of gauze from Steve and tore it open with his teeth.  “Yeah, neither does Dummy,” he muttered, spitting the paper out before squeezing an entire packet of Neosporin onto the fabric square.  “I swear to God, as a kid I was promised a future with robots and jet packs, and let me tell you, Rogers, that jet pack is a piece of _shit_ and the robots are more trouble than they are good.”

Steve smirked to keep himself from laughing.  He nodded in the direction the droid had rolled off in and asked, “if it’s so much trouble, why not just stop using it?”

Tony glared at Steve.  “Because that’s _giving up.”_  He went back to his arm, muttering, “nobody’s going to make better _anything_ by sitting on a spreadsheet.  God knows no one else is doing anything remotely impressive in terms of robotic development.”  He sighed.   “It’s all about working your design.”

Steve frowned.  “But… isn’t that one of your _older_ designs?”

Tony only glanced up from his arm for a moment, before returning to work on his wound.  “It’s a work in progress.  Besides, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.”  He sighed through his teeth.  “Just… threaten to solder it within an inch of its artificial life and send it away every time it fucks with a motherboard you were five hours into construction on.”

Steve nodded as though he’d understood so much as one word of whatever it was Tony had just said.  “You going to be okay?”

Tony covered the wound with the gauze before reaching over and flipping the entire motherboard from the table onto the floor where it shattered loud enough to make Steve jump.  Tony stared at the fragments on the floor and let out a long sigh.  “Yeah,” he said, nodding.  “Yeah, I feel loads better now.”

Steve gave him a sidelong look.  “Okay… glad to hear it.”

He sighed.  “Back to the drawing board.”

***

“Come on, Banner!  You know you want to!”

Bruce chuckled, shaking his head.  “I really don’t.”

Tony Stark had been working on the reconstruction of Stark Tower for a good two weeks since what was becoming known as The Manhattan Incident, but while construction was moving unbelievably quickly, there was still a considerable amount of work left to go.  In the meantime, however, Stark had informed them all they were more than welcome to stay, help rebuild, and make themselves at home.  For Bruce specifically, that had meant a floor that was reinforced with ceilings high enough and floor strong enough to support him if ‘the other guy’ decided he needed a stretch.  For the rest of the team, it meant a huge play space, one which Clint and Thor were taking full advantage of at the moment.

Clint tossed the football between his hands, still looking at Bruce who was sitting on a pile of steel girders with a tablet in hand.  “Come on, doc,” Clint said, “who doesn’t like throwing the pigskin every now and again.  Besides, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”  He stepped back, then forward, tossing the ball as hard as he could down the full-length of the room.

Thor took two steps back, and without so much as flinching, reached up one hand and caught the ball.  He looked at it.  “This is a… test of coordination among your people?” he asked.  Thor had only returned from Asgard a few days earlier, and wasn’t going to be staying much longer than that.

“It’s a test of _something_ ,” Natasha muttered as she walked into the room, sitting on the girders next to Bruce and handing him one of the two cups of tea she carried in.

“What does it prove?” Thor asked.

Clint frowned.  “Y’know, I’m not sure.  I guess… strength?  Endurance?”

“That your GPA doesn’t matter if you can win the Heisman,” Bruce said, not looking up from his work.

Clint gave him a look.  “It’s not just about stupid strength.  There’s skill involved, too!”

Natasha just raised an eyebrow.

“Oh come on!” Clint argued.  “There’s all those plays you have to memorize, so that’s concentration!” He continued to rattle off, not noticing Thor gearing up to throw the ball back to him.  “Uh… balance and agility if you’re quarterback…  And don’t forget, there’s—”

The ball hit Clint squarely in the chest, sending him flying a good six or seven feet back from where he stood.

“Oh my God!” Bruce gasped as Natasha rushed across the room.

The Asgardian looked troubled.  “Did I not throw it correctly?”

Clint kept coughing as Natasha pulled him into an upright and seated position.  He waved her off weakly, muttering, “M’fine.  Mm… just… _air_.”  He coughed again, struggled to remember how to breathe.

“You know, this is why I went into biochemistry and engineering and not sports,” Bruce said, already back to work on his tablet.

Clint struggled to stand, Natasha holding him steady as he started to laugh.  “Th—” He was cut off by a fit of coughing, but not for long.  “That’s a helluva throw, Thor.”

Thor beamed.  “I receive your compliment with gratitude.”

“Which is why I’m never playing with you again,” Clint said, rubbing his chest.  “Oh, I think my ribs are bruised,” he wheezed as Natasha, rolling her eyes, pulled his arm over her shoulders and guided him toward the pile of girders.

Thor stood, hands on his hips as he watched the others.  He looked confused.  “Is the game ended, then?”

“I don’t think it really started,” Natasha chuckled, helping Clint pull off his shirt and checking his chest.

Thor frowned.  “Why are we not playing to completion, then?”

Bruce chuckled.  “Because you need someone a heck of a lot stronger than Clint to play with you, I think.”

Thor considered this a moment, then gestured as he jogged to pick up the football.  “Then come, Banner.  Let us continue this game.”

Bruce looked up from the tablet, pulled off his glasses.  “Excuse me?”

“You would be a worthy adversary in this event of pigskin tossing,” Thor said, picking up the ball.

Bruce shook his head.  “Uh, no.  I’m pretty much as breakable as Clint, so… that’s not going to work out for—”

“Your mental companion, then,” Thor responded.

Bruce blinked several times, his little twitch, and rubbed his temples with both hands.  “I-I… I, uh, don’t think that’s a very good—”

“You did say you wanted to give the other guy a bit more free time,” Natasha pointed out.  “Keep him mellow.”

Bruce gave her a look that conveyed all his irritation in one take, but it was already too late.  Thor was bouncing on his feet, shouting, “See!  Precisely!  Come, Banner!  Join me in this game!  Just for a short while.”

Bruce shoved his tablet and glasses at Natasha who was smirking.  “You guys are lucky I’m wearing sweatpants,” he snapped, taking off his t-shirt and tossing it across the room.  He began untying the front of the pants as he walked.  His steps grew heavier with each stride, the floor thrumming under his feet.  His body grew, and _kept_ growing.  They could hear the seams of the sweat pants straining against the sheer mass of the green-colored being standing on the opposite end of the room from Thor.  The Hulk snorted, and smiled, dragging its knuckles on the floor.  “Throw ball, puny _blonde_ God,” he said.

Thor was smiling, but it was a smile laced with a _challenge_.  He lifted the ball and, as hard as he could, threw it to the other side of the room.

The Hulk caught it in one hand and, without so much as a hesitation, flung it back at Thor.

The speed of the ball made it nearly invisible to the untrained, and while the demi-god _did_ catch the ball, it didn’t stop him from stumbling back several steps from the sheer power of the throw.  He shook the smart of the ball out of his hands, looking and the Hulk and chuckling.  “That’s more like it,” he smirked, and threw the ball back.

This time, it was the Hulk who stumbled back a step.  It stared at the ball, then let out one, deafening bellow at Thor and threw the ball harder.

Thor stepped forward, wincing as the ball struck his hands, but turned in a circle and tossed the ball back like a discus.

The Hulk caught it, swung his arm high in a circle like some sort of crazed baseball pitcher, and flung the ball at Thor. Who then proceeded to be struck backwards across the room, through the wall and into the supply closet.

Natasha and Clint stared at the now-gaping hole in the wall as the Hulk pounded on his chest and bellowed at the ceiling.  It was several seconds before Thor stumbled out of the mess of concrete dust and dry wall, holding a deflated handful of vinyl over his head.  He laughed.  “Verily, _this_ be a _game_!”  He tossed the now-unusable football to the floor.  “We require more items with which to play!”

It was at that moment Steve came running through the door.  “I was upstairs when I heard the Hulk, is everything—”

“Captain!” Thor said as the Hulk bellowed a welcome in Steve’s direction.  “You must join us.  We were playing a game of pigskin!”

Steve frowned.  “Pigskin—?”

“Football,” Clint sighed, the bruises starting to show on his chest.  “They were playing catch with a football.”

Steve blinked, looking between Clint and Natasha sitting on the sidelines and the Hulk and Thor standing by what had once been a wall.  “Um, okay… so… how did—?”

“Dr. Banner’s mental companion is a warrior of great valor!” Thor said, clapping a hand on the Hulk’s forearm.  “He possesses the strength of eighty stallions and the fortitude of a frost troll!”

The Hulk smiled and patted Thor on the back, knocking him to the floor.  Thor picked himself up off the ground, still laughing.

Steve sighed, walking past the two toward the supply closet.  “Well, as much fun as we’re all having, I don’t think Stark’s going to be very happy about th—”

“What did we break?”

Tony entered through the same door Steve just had, wiping his hands on a rag as Steve ventured forth into the ruins of the supply closet.  Tony sighed, looking from the hole to Thor and the Hulk.  “See, kids, this is why you can’t have nice things.  All the stuff on your two’s floors?  IKEA. Not even kidding.  That’s all you’re getting from me, and when shit breaks every other hour on the hour, no one is surprised.  How's this sound?: when you run out of furniture, you sleep on the floor.”

The Hulk gave a disappointed huff, grinding his fists into the floor.  “Am sorry.”

“As am I,” Thor sighed, patting the Hulk’s shoulder.  At Tony’s continued glare, he added, “we did not intend to cause trouble in your castle, Anthony Stark—”

“Oh. My. _God_ , Thor, I’m _serious_ ,” Tony muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose, “if you call me _Anthony_ again, I’m going to buy you an argyle sweater vest and nerd glasses, okay?  Tony’s fine.  Or Stark, or…”  He sighed.  “Just… _not_ Anthony, okay, my mother called me Anthony, and only when she was angry and…”  He changed the subject with a gesture at the wall.  “Okay, well… this level’s unfinished, so what’s a little more concrete?  I can totally afford that, right?  None of this is coming straight out of my own pocket, a-and it’s not like Fury’s a _tight-ass_ with S.H.I.E.L.D funding, _right_?”

“Am I detecting some sarcasm, Mr. Stark?” Clint piped up from across the room.

Tony pointed, not so much as looking in Clint’s direction.  “You just won yourself a sweater vest, Katniss.”

“Again, Tony Stark,” Thor said, giving him a sincere look.  “You have my apologies and assistance in repairing the damages I have caused.”  There was an awkward silence and Thor looked at the Hulk, punched him in the arm.

The Hulk made a growling noise at Thor and rubbed his arm, but at the look the demi-god was giving him, he sighed.  “Hulk help, too.”

“Noted, boys,” Tony sighed, tapping the screen of his wrist-watch before speaking into it.  “Jarvis?”

_> >Here, Sir.<<_

Thor looked at the ceiling, stumbling backward and looking confused.  “Who speaks?”

“It’s his computer butler,” Steve explained, already busy carrying chunks of broken wall out of the supply closet.

Thor just squinted at Steve.

Steve sighed.  “It’s… it’s not alive, it just… lives in the house.”

“It is a being but it possesses no form?” Thor asked.  “Be Anthony Stark a witch of sorts?”

Clint began pointing frantically from where he was still sitting.  “Two sweater vests!!  We need two!”

“Take a note,” Tony was saying to Jarvis, “for the gym in the basement, we’re going to need something a bit more sturdy than concrete.”  He blinked.  “And _steel_.  And… _anything_ , listen, run me a cost of getting walls made out of adamantium, call a supplier and _don’t_ tell me the numbers, I’m not in the mood, just send me an email or something when you hear back from them.”

_> >Noted, Sir.<<_

Tony sighed and looked up at where Thor and Steve were both fussing around in the closest.  “Well, I suppose the good news, if there is any to be had, is that we’re not actually _storing_ anything in there yet, right?  I mean, w…”  Tony’s gaze drifted past Thor to where Steve was holding up was did not look like a block of concrete.  “The hell is that?”

Steve held up the item in his hand, took a deep breath and blew a cloud of concrete dust off of it.  “Uh, Tony… I think it’s…”  He cleared his throat, walking out of the rubble and up in front of Tony.  “I think it’s Dummy.”

Tony stared at the chunk of plastic and wires dangling from Steve’s hand.  He walked over and plucked it out of the other man’s hands and stared at it, slack-jawed.

Natasha was frowning, but managed to keep the deeper concern out of her features.  “Why would Dummy be in the closet?”

Tony’s throat worked.  “Because I told it to go to the supply closet, I didn’t designate which one, I…”  He swallowed hard.

Thor looked to Steve who just gave him a worried shrug. 

Everyone stood in silence for several moments, waiting to see what would happen.

Tony sniffed hard, looking up from the robotic arm in his hands only to realize everyone was staring at him. “What?” he asked, a little more edge to his voice than necessary.

Steve was giving him one of those looks a parent gives a child who’s just seen their pet run over.  “You okay, Tony?”

Tony shrugged.  “Course I’m okay, why wouldn’t I be okay?”  He sniffed again.  “It’s just… it’s a relic, y’know.  Couldn’t do a damn thing right.  Burned my arm.  Never could get the fire extinguisher down, and it…”  He blinked fast and hard, shrugging again.  “Why would I care that it’s broken, hm?”  He let the piece of the droid fall from his hands to a floor.  “Not like anything around this tower’s sacred anymore, right?  I’m housing the biggest mess of superhuman screw-ups under one roof, things are going to get broken.  My things are going to get broken, so no.  _No_ , I’m not _mad_.”

“You are insincere,” Thor said quietly.

Tony rolled his eyes.  “What do you mean, I’m _insincere?”_

Thor motioned at his face.  “Your eyes… they are like glass.  You appear on the verge of tears.”

“Yeah, well you appear on the verge of not getting a room, Hurricane Sally,” Tony snapped, looking from face to face, all focused with utmost concern on him.  “God!  Don’t look at me like that!  It’s _annoying_.”  They didn’t stop.  Tony threw his hands up.  “Look, I’m fine!  You think I’m going to become an emotional wreck just because you idiots break something of mine?”  He forced a laugh.  “Don’t you think that might have come out a bit more after Thor’s idiot brother nearly totaled my _fucking tower?_   Huh?”  He kicked the robotic arm at his feet and sniffed.  He shrugged his shoulders.  “Whatever.  What the _fuck_ ever.  I’m going to bed.”

The others in the room watched Tony walk from the room in silence, and for a long while, no one spoke.

It was Clint who broke the silence.  “Well, good to see he’s taking it like a champ.”

Natasha sighed.  “He’s not taking it like a champ, he’s furious and heart-broken.”

“How can you tell?” Steve asked.

She gave him a tired smile.  “Worked for Stark’s company for half a year, remember?”

“ _I_ remember,” Clint sighed.

“So how do we make our recompenses?” Thor asked.

“You don’t,” Natasha said.  “You go away and you never speak of it again and if you’re lucky, he’ll never bring it up.”

“There’s got to be something we can do to make it up to him,” Steve said.

Natasha shook her head.  “No, Cap.  There isn’t.”

Steve rubbed the back of his neck hard as Thor and the Hulk stared at the hole in the wall.  The Hulk looked down at him, his face turned into a frown that—in any other situation—would have been comical.  “Accident,” he grunted.

Steve patted him on the arm.  “I know, buddy.  I know.”

***

And for two days, that seemed to be that.

No one talked about the mishap save the time it took them to repair the wall, and then, nothing.  Bruce had gathered the salvageable parts from Dummy and put them aside in a box.  Tony, however, didn’t seem interested in repairing the droid.  The only time he’d asked after the droid was to find out whether or not they’d had any trouble getting the parts out to the dumpster.  Steve had responded that they had not, in fact, had any trouble, trying to bait Tony into a conversation.  Everyone had held their breath to see how Tony would react.  Tony, however, simply nodded and told them all ‘good work’ before he left the room.

And that was the end of it.  Things went on as they had before.

Or at least they seemed to.

Bruce was the first to point out Tony was more reclusive than normal, at which point Natasha pointed out that Tony not-talking was, in fact, not a _good_ sign, but a _bad_ one.  Steve asked what she thought they should do, to which Natasha shrugged.  “Honestly, Steve,” she sighed, “trying to help Tony Stark is the very definition of an exercise in futility.  But if you want my professional opinion?  Wait it out and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid or self-damaging in the meantime.”

And so they did.

***

It had been roughly a week since the accident, and the tower was coming along nicely.  Thor had extended his stay indefinitely to help with the construction and between him, Steve, and _the other guy_ , progress had nearly doubled.  Tony appeared at least once a day, espresso in hand, to give direction and further instruction then disappear back to his lab.  As per Natasha’s instructions, no one pressed the issue or brought up the accident.

No one.  Until tonight.

Steve was starting to realize Tony Stark didn’t sleep; he just drank four shots of espresso per yawn and—sometimes, when called for—caught a nap on the sofa in his lab.  When he wasn’t in the Iron Man suit helping the other team members in assembling beams and girders for the building’s infrastructure, he was in his lab, working on his computer, writing code, or building high-tech looking devices he was installing throughout the tower.

Tonight, however, Tony seemed to be reading.

Steve gave a little knock on the glass and Tony looked up from the stack of papers on his desk.  He pressed a button that opened the door.  “Captain,” he said, attention already back to the papers on his desk.

“Stark,” Steve said.  “It’s three in the morning.  Aren’t you going to get some rest?”

“Could ask the same of you,” Tony said, glancing up.  At the look Steve was giving him, he added, “Cap, come on.  You thought you’d sneak off to the gym and no one would notice you left?  Be honest with me, how many nights a week do you sleep more than three hours?”

Steve shrugged.  “Fair enough.”  He nodded at the table.  “Light reading?”

Tony’s mouth twitched into a tired smile.  “Close enough.”  He picked up one of the pages, held it out to Steve.

Steve took the page, turned it over.  An old newspaper clipping was pasted to the page.  It took him a moment, then his eyebrows went clear up to his hairline.  “You?”

Tony nodded, picking up another page with another article.  “Mom always cut out the articles and scrapbooked them.  Waste of time since everything’s available online or scanned or on microfiche somewhere, but what the hell, right?”

Steve took the next page from the table, frowning.  “How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” Tony said.  “Just graduated.”

Steve glanced up at him, turned the page to face Tony.  “That Dummy?”

Tony stared at the photo, swallowed.  “Uh, yeah… yeah, it…”  He sniffed hard, clearing his throat and nodding.  “Won tons of awards.  Made Dad proud.”  He shrugged.  “Became a useless piece of junk toward the end there, but—”

“You know, it’s okay to be upset,” Steve said.

Tony snorted.  “Uh… thanks, _Clarissa_ , I’ll stash that nugget of wisdom away for a rainy day.”

Steve gave him a hard look.  “You don’t have to be rude—”

“And you don’t have to _patronize_ me,” Tony sneered.

Steve gave a bitter laugh.  “I’m not patronizing you, Stark, I’m…”  He shook his head, jaw working as he gave a shrug.  “Just trying to figure you out.”

Tony’s eyes narrowed, gave the other man a once-over as he leaned back in his chair.  “Why?”

“Because we’re on a _team_ , now,” Steve said with a shrug.  “And if we’re going to be a good team, well… we probably ought to know a bit about each other, shouldn’t we?”

Tony held Steve’s gaze a long while, not saying anything.  He seemed to be considering which quip and/or girl’s name to call him this time, but suddenly—unexpectedly—he did something unusual.  Tony gave a small shrug and pointed to the chair opposite his lab table.  Steve frowned, and Tony pointed again.  “Sit.”  Steve took a seat as Tony opened one of the drawers to his desk and pulled out a crystal tumbler and a bottle of dark, amber liquid.  “You drink, Captain?”

Steve snorted.  “Drink, sure.  Get drunk…”  He shrugged.  “Not for a long time.”

“Why not?”

Steve chuckled.  “Uh, mostly because I can’t.  Metabolism’s too fast, they tell me.”

Tony smirked and poured an inch of whiskey into the glass.  “Well, we’ll have to try and prove them wrong, won’t we, Captain?”  He shoved the tumbler to Steve, keeping the bottle for himself.  He held it up in mock-toast.

Steve chuckled, picking up the glass and clinking it against the bottle.  “We can certainly try, Mr. Stark.”

***

Steve was, for lack of a better word, _impressed_.  Tony Stark was the sort of man who could drink Dum-Dum Dugan under a table, and that was a feat in and of itself.

But that wasn’t to say the liquor had _no_ effect.

The whiskey seemed to be loosening Tony’s tongue.  More than Steve had anticipated.

“I told Pep I wasn’t _sentimental_ , but she insisted,” he said, patting the glass box that housed an arc-reactor engraved with the words, _“Proof That Tony Stark Has A Heart.”_  “It ended up saving my life… Dummy, too.”  He shrugged.  “And… I dunno, it got me thinking.”

“Thinking what?” Steve asked.

Tony shrugged, let out a long sigh.  “Old things.  Mine.  Dad’s, just…”  He shook his head.  “How much of our old stuff actually could work if we looked at it again?  I mean, we wrote the arc-reactor off for years and it… well…”  He tapped the center of his chest, the glowing circle behind the Pink Floyd logo on his shirt.  His throat worked.  “You know, it…”  He shook his head and looked up at Steve, eyes gone glassy and distant.  He sniffed.  “I miss that stupid bot, y’know?” he asked with a soggy laugh.  He reached up and wiped his face.  “It… was the last thing I made before Dad died.  The only thing I made on my own.  _My. Own_.   Dad would usually comment on my design, or… give advice or tweak the blueprints, but Dummy?”  Tony smirked.  “One-hundred percent mine.”  Tony let out a soft chuckle, shook his head and took a swing from the bottle.  He winced, blinking hard as he muttered, “god, Dad was so proud… I think he even _cried_ when I unveiled it for the expo… first gen AI with cutting-edge robotics.”  Tony chuckled, staring at the bottle.  “I think that was the first time he realized I might actually be better at this than he was.”

Steve sloshed the liquid in his glass in a slow circle, eyes never leaving Tony.  “He’d be proud of you, you know?”

Tony smirked, looked up from the bottle.  “Y’think so?”

“Not a doubt in my mind,” Steve said.  “You’re a lot like him, you know.  More like him than you’d like to be, I’m sure, but…”  He took a deep breath, nodded.  “I think he’d be impressed with what you’ve accomplished.”

Tony’s throat worked and his eyes went to the mess of papers on his desk.  “You know… for a long time, I thought that was what I wanted.  Dad wasn’t… well, he wasn’t one for hugs or chatting about his feelings, but… I don’t know, he always wanted to talk about _things_.  About his projects, about his plans, about the newest coding sequences, about…”  Tony shrugged.  “We never… talked, not really.  Not… _ever_.”  He sniffed and shrugged.  “Anyway, I’m not getting weepy over Dad or… childhood gone awry…”  He shook his head.  “I wouldn’t swap it.  I wouldn’t.  Not for the world.  But Dummy…”  He shook his head.  “If I’m going to be sentimental about something… might as well have been Dummy.”

“You can still fix it,” Steve said.  “Bruce saved a bunch of the parts.”

Tony shrugged.  “Won’t be the same.  It won’t be Dummy, it’ll be something brand new wearing a Dummy-skin and pretending to be Dummy and…”  He blinked.  “Wow, that metaphor took a turn for the creepy real fast.”  He shuddered and sat upright in his chair.  “What I’m saying is… it’s not about fixing it.  I can fix it.  Fact of the matter is, well…”  He shrugged and lifted the bottle to his mouth.  “I fucked up.”

Steve’s eyes widened as he swallowed a mouthful of the whiskey.  He tried to hold back the smirk, but his mouth was already moving.  “I’m sorry, did your computer butler happen to get that on film?  Because I think I want a recording of that last bit for posterity and—”

“So help me, try and tell _anyone_ I said that and I will deny you before God, Rogers,” Tony laughed, leaning over and topping off Steve’s glass.  He sighed.  “Fact of the matter is … I lost my temper, and because of that, Dummy got messed up.  And even if I fix it… well, then that mistake’s just going to be there staring me in the face every hour of every day I’m in this workshop trying to get things done.”  Tony seemed to consider his words a moment, hearing them after he’d said them.  He lifted the bottle to his mouth and took a drink large enough to make him cough.

“That’s not… a _bad_ thing, Stark,” Steve murmured, shaking his head.  “Sometimes, it…”  He cleared his throat.  “I made a mistake… a long time ago.  I made a call about who to bring on a mission, and…”  He shrugged, lifting his glass and examining it in the dim light of the workshop.  “It was the wrong choice.  And every day after that, I’d have to get up, look my unit in the eyes—Howard included—and I’d still have to make choices, and…”  He sighed.  “Seeing them reminded me that those choices I was making could be the line to whether or not they all made it home every day.”  He nodded slowly, eyes fixed on Tony who was staring straight back at him.  “And at the end of the day, that’s why I had to put that bird in the water.  That’s why I had to make the hard call and…”  He lifted the glass to his mouth.  “That’s why I ended up here.”

Tony said nothing, just stared as the other man took a long drink.  He offered to fill the glass again, but Steve shook his head, covered the cup with one hand and continued.

“I think that’s one of the reasons it’s been hard working with you, y’know?” he said, not looking at Tony any longer, but at the ceiling.  “It’s like… i-it’s having all that history still staring me in the face, I-I mean…”  He chuckled, looking at Tony and giving him a nod.  “You look a helluva lot like your dad.”

Tony smirked, staring at the bottle.  “I’m… not my dad.  I’m just not.”

“No, you’re not,” Steve said, still staring at him.  “And… I think that’s been one of the problems for me.  Separating you from your dad.”  He shrugged.  “I think it’s been a problem for you, too.”

Tony’s eyes were glassy again.  He cleared his throat and stared at the ceiling.  “Wow.  Okay.”  He nodded, laughed to hold back the emotion and murmured, “I think that one might have stung a bit, chief.”

Steve laughed, the same distant laugh Tony had, and stared at his near-empty glass.  “Look, what I’m saying is… it’s not bad to want things to stay the same.  I mean, things change, but…”  He shrugged.  “It’s not a bad thing to have a few things that remind you where you came from.”

Tony considered this for a long while in silence.  He sighed, scratching the underside of his chin.  “Y’know, maybe I will ask Bruce for those parts.”

“I think you should,” Steve said, finishing off his drink.  He set the glass down, gave a little nod and stood.  “Well, thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Stark.”

“Come on, Rogers,” Tony muttered, sliding the glass across the table and putting the lid on the bottle of whiskey.  “You can call me Tony, now.  We’re there, we’ve reached that point.”

Steve chuckled.  “Only if you call me Steve.”

Tony smirked and put the bottle back into the drawer.  “Fair enough.”  Steve started to leave the room when Tony spoke up again.  “Hey, Steve… question.”

“Alright,” Steve said, turning to where Tony was taking his time figuring out how to stand.

“So, I’ve got Dummy as my link to the past, reminder of mistakes, and frequent flyer card for feels, right?” Tony said, gesturing around the lab.

“Yeah?”

“What have you got?”

Steve blinked.  He hadn’t thought about it.  The compass hadn’t been recovered from the wreckage of the plane.  In fact nothing save his shield had been recovered, though he’d never considered it a symbol of Steve Rogers, the kid from Brooklyn.  Just of Captain America.  He realized he had no answer and chuckled.  “I dunno…”  He shrugged.  “Commando might be gone, but…”  He looked at Tony, smiled.  “I guess there’s you, right?  Howard’s boy.”  He shrugged.  “My link to my past.”

Tony’s eyebrows went up.

For a long while they both stood in silence, staring at each other from across the workshop.  Neither of them moved.  For all Steve could tell, neither of them _breathed_.  Steve cleared his throat, finally breaking the silence when he asked, “okay, was that weird—?”

Tony made a face.  “A little weird, yeah—”

“—because, I didn’t mean to imply that—”

“—Oh, no, of course, no homo, bro—”

“No what—?”

“No, look, it means, it…”  Tony rolled his eyes and began to chuckle.  He looked at Steve, giving him a warm, sincere smile.  “ _Thank you_ … is… what I’m trying to say.”

“Well…”  Steve shrugged.  “You’re welcome, Mr. Stark.”

For a long moment neither of them said anything.  Just stared at each other, waiting for the other to make the next move, say the next line.  And they were both out of lines.

This time, it was Tony who broke the silence, chuckling to himself.  “Okay, yeah, definitely been up too long this time.  Let’s both get out of here before smooth jazz starts playing and you take me roughly over the workbench.”

Steve hadn’t understood a word of whatever it was Tony had just said.  “What?”

“ _Nothing_ ,” Tony chuckled, clapping a hand on the captain’s shoulder.  “Nothing, just…”  He smirked.  “ _Thanks_.”

***

Tony would deny any remembrance of the last night’s conversation when Steve brought it up the next morning.  However that afternoon Tony did ask Bruce for the salvaged components from the accident.

Tony began drafting plans for Dummy 2.0 that evening.


End file.
